A whiff of ghosts, mystery and inspiration

As the South African summer season gets into full swing, Patricia McCracken has picked out a refreshing assortment of fiction and non-fiction books to tuck into as the temperatures begin to soar.

- Patricia McCracken

Journey To Ithaca by William Rowland (University of Johannesburg Press, R275)

Rowland was an energetic, transformative leader of the South African National Council for the Blind, serving as its chief executive from 1996.

Although born sighted, he was left blind at age five after a stray gunshot through his temple severed his optic nerves. Yet, as this highly personal memoir shows, he was undaunted, adapting with the help of his parents.

Rowland was a high achiever at Worcester's Pioneer School for the Visually Impaired and then trained as a physio in Cape Town and London.

His own experiences and determination encouraged him to lobby for equal opportunities for the disabled, detailed in his 2003 account of the growth of SA's disability rights movement, Nothing About Us Without Us.

His own well-rounded life includes writing poetry and children's books and his heightened senses detecting what appeared to be an 18th-century American ghost.

Jane's Delicious Natural Solutions For Pests & Diseases by Jane Griffiths (Sunbird Press, R410)